8 Rescue workers killed on Mount Merapi

The bodies of four members of the Disaster Response Team were recovered from the slopes of Mount Merapi on Monday before rescue officials had to retreat as the volcano again roared into life.
Six bodies were recovered from the village of Glagaharjo in Sleman, Yogyakarta. The bodies of another two members of the response team, known as Tagana, believed to have been killed when Merapi exploded last Thursday, are yet to be found or recovered.Some crazy people are still attempting to take advantage of the situation.
On Sunday, police arrested a man for attempting to steal livestock abandoned by those fleeing the eruptions.
The man was arrested attempting to steal 21 goats and five cows, but two accomplices managed to escape.Excerpt from a JakartaGlobe article. Please read the much longer original article

People flee Yogjakarta as the eruption of Mount Merapi continues

Frightened residents in a bustling city of 400,000 at the foot of Indonesia’s rumbling volcano headed out of town Monday, cramming onto trains and buses and even rented vehicles to seek refuge with family and friends far away.
“My parents have been calling … saying ‘You have to get out of there! You have to come home!’” said Linda Ervana, a 21-year-old history student who was waiting with friends at a train station in the university town of Yogyakarta, 30 kilometers from Mount Merapi.
After failing to get tickets, they finally decided to rent a minibus with other classmates.
The notoriously unpredictable mountain unleashed its most powerful eruption in a century Friday, sending hot clouds of gas, rocks and debris avalanching down its slopes at highway speeds, smothering entire villages and leaving a trail of charred corpses in its path.Excerpt from a JakartaGlobe article. Please read the much longer original article

Search for bodies stopped due to too high temperatures

Indonesian rescue workers were forced to abandon efforts to retrieve bodies of victims from the Nov. 5 eruption of Mount Merapi in central Java, as increasing ground temperature and volcanic instability made it unsafe to continue.
Rescuers had been using wooden boards to walk on in areas where the soil reached temperatures higher than 70 degrees Celsius, Oka Hamid, a spokesman at Red Cross Indonesia’s Yogyakarta branch, said today.
“We found five bodies at Glagaharjo village, but only one was removed,” Hamid said by phone. “We are coming down now because the ground there is too hot and Merapi is unstable.”
Non-flammable boots and special gloves are needed to protect rescuers from hot burning soil, Hamid said.Excerpt from a JakartaGlobe article. Please read the much longer original article

Indonesia raised its alert for Mount Merapi to its highest level on Monday and ordered people living near the rumbling volcano to move immediately to safer ground.

Seismic activity has escalated dramatically at the volcano on the densely populated island of Java, with increasing lava spurts and about 500 multi-phased volcanic earthquakes recorded over the weekend, officials said.

The state office of volcanology upgraded its alert level to red at 6:00 a.m., signaling an eruption could be imminent.

“The magma has been pushed upwards due to the escalating seismic energy and it’s about a kilometer below the crater,” government volcanologist Surono said.

People had been ordered to evacuate a danger zone of 10 kilometers from the crater of the 2,914-meter mountain.